Halil the Pedlar eBook

The rebel leaders had assembled together in the central
mosque, and from thence distributed their commands.

At the sixth hour (according to Christian calculation
ten o’clock in the evening) the ship arrived
bearing the Sultan, the princes, the magnates, and
the sacred banner, and cast anchor beside the coast
kiosk at the Gate of Cannons.

Inside the Seraglio none knew anything of the position
of affairs. All through the city a great commotion
prevailed with the blowing of horns, in the cemetery
bivouac fires had been everywhere lighted.

“Why cannot I send a couple of grenades among
them from the sea?” sighed the Kapudan Pasha,
“that would quiet them immediately, I warrant.”

As the Kizlar-Aga, Elhaj Beshir, came face to face
with the newly arrived ministers in the ante-chamber
where the Mantle of the Prophet was jealously guarded,
he rubbed his hands together with an enigmatical smile
which ill became his coarse, brutal countenance and
cloven lips, and when the Padishah asked him what
the rebels wanted, he replied that he really did not
know.

That smile of his, that rubbing of the hands, which
had been robbed of their thumbs by the savage cruelty
of a former master for some piece of villainy or other—­these
things were premonitions of evil to all the officials
present.

Elhaj Beshir Aga had now held his office for fourteen
years, during which time he had elevated and deposed
eight Grand Viziers.

And now, how were the demands of the rebels to be
discovered?

Damad Ibrahim suggested that the best thing to do
was to summon Sulali Hassan, a former cadi of Stambul,
whose name he had heard mentioned by the town-crier
along with that of Halil Patrona.

They found Sulali in his summer house, and at the
first summons he appeared in the Seraglio. He
declared that the rebels had been playing fast and
loose with his name, and that he knew nothing whatever
of their wishes.

“Then take with you the Chaszeki Aga and twenty
bostanjis, and go in search of Halil Patrona, and
find out what he wants!” commanded the Padishah.

“It is a pity to give worthy men unnecessary
trouble, most glorious Sultan,” said Abdi Pasha
bitterly. “I am able to tell you what the
rebels want, for I have seen it all written up on the
walls. They demand the delivery of four of the
great officers of state—­myself, the Chief
Mufti, the Grand Vizier, and the Kiaja. Surrender
us then, O Sultan! yet surrender us not alive! but
slay us first and then their mouths will be stopped.
Let them glut their appetites on us. You know
that no wild beast is savage when once it has been
well fed.”

The Sultan pretended not to hear these words.
He did not even look up when the Kapudan spoke.

“Seek out Halil Patrona!” he said to the
Chaszeki Aga, “and greet him in the name of
the Padishah!”

What! Greet Halil Patrona in the name of the
Padishah! Greet that petty huckster in the name
of the master of many empires, in the name of the
Prince of Princes, Shahs, Khans, and Deys, the dominator
of Great Moguls! Who would have believed in the
possibility of such a thing three days ago?